We take complex science issues and facts ... and turn them into something accessible, fun and interactive Science Made Simple.
The Beautiful Science Project invites teachers of Physics of to use the Visualise Educational Pack (in Romanian) for a creative, fun and effective way of learning physics! Teachers interested to get it may ask for maximum 20 copies per school. Contact Dana Radler, Projects Officer at dana.radler@britishcouncil.ro .
The educational pack was designed by Science Made Simple in cooperation with British Council.
Watch our 30 seconds presentation video.
Please see below the electronic version of the Visualise Educational Pack.
To download the animations (AVI format) please select one of the folders in the left menu and right click to save it locally.
If you place a strip of paper below your mouth, and blow over it, you will notice that the paper rises. This is due to a physical effect called the Bernoulli effect. The Bernoulli effect, named after Daniel Bernoulli (1700 - 1782) is one of the forces involved in flight. This is because the pressure is lower in a moving fluid than in a stationary fluid. The faster the fluid, or in this case air, moves, the lower the pressure, and the greater the lift. Wings are shaped so that most of the air moves more quickly over the upper surface of the wing. This creates lower pressure and thus lift, and helps the plane to overcome the effects of gravity. But the Bernoulli effect is only part of the whole picture of flight. For a more detailed explanation of flight look up the Magnus effect, named after the German physicist and chemist Heinrich Gustav Magnus (1802-1870).
Activity
1. Try putting the bottom, or convex, side of a small spoon into a smooth but quickly running stream of water from the tap. You should feel a small force pushing the spoon into the stream of water. The higher pressure outside the moving water 'pushes' the spoon into the lower pressure water.
2. Try putting a light ball (beach balls work well) into a stream of air blowing straight up from a leaf blower, or other such device. Once the ball 'balances' try lowering the angle of the stream of air.
What happens to the ball?
See what angle you can lower the stream of air to before the ball falls.
Branching patterns are everywhere in nature: blood vessels in your body, trees, river basins, fungi, and corals all show branching patterns. Most organisms on earth contain branching networks.
Most varieties of branching begin with a main shape or 'stem' (for example the trunk of a tree), which then sprouts off a number of similar but smaller branches, and the process carries on.
Branching is a very successful way for trees to grow because the branches spread out evenly and let the tree leaves get the most amount of sunlight needed for more growth. It also gives the tree a strong and stable structure.
The branching of blood vessels allows the body to pump blood to all areas of the body quickly and evenly. If you took all of the blood vessels out of a human adult, and laid them out in one line, the line would be close to 161,000 kilometers long, and would circle the earth four times!
Activity
Dab a blob of paint onto the centre of a piece of acetate, or clear overhead projector sheet.
Place another piece of acetate on top.
Use a flat object, such as a heavy book, to squash the paint between the sheets. Make sure you press down hard.
Carefully peel back the top piece of acetate to reveal your very own branching pattern.
Branching pattern, image copyright Science Made Simple
The Colour Wheel is a disc of 3 coloured gels. The three colours red, blue and green are repeated (see picture).
When this disc is spun slowly in front of a light source the colours are apparent and you see a procession of red, blue and green. If the speed of spin is increased the colours appear to blend together to give white light.
The retina of the human eye has three receptors for coloured light: one type of receptor is most sensitive to red light, one to green light, and one to blue light. When these three colours are directed at the eye equally we get the sensation of white. As the wheel spins faster the receptors become stimulated equally, and almost at the same time, and so the brain receives the sensation of white light.
Activity
Make your own Colour Wheel using coloured gels and a power hand drill.
Spin the disc in front of a light source and project on to a white surface or screen.
See how fast it has to go before appearing white.
Why do you think it has to go this fast?
Try flapping some white or reflective material in front of the light from the Colour Wheel. What do you notice?
Try using just red and green gels. What do you notice?
Try using different colour gels. What do you notice?
Colour Wheel, image copyright Science Made Simple
The retina of the human eye has three receptors for coloured light: One type of receptor is most sensitive to red light, one to green light, and one to blue light. With these three colour receptors we are able to perceive more than a million different shades of colour.
When a red light, a blue light, and a green light are all shining on the screen, the screen looks white because these three coloured lights stimulate all three colour receptors on your retinas approximately equally, giving us the sensation of white. Red, green, and blue are therefore called additive primaries of light. Red and blue give magenta; green and red give yellow; blue and green give cyan.
With these three lights you can make shadows of seven different colours: blue, red, green, black, cyan, magenta and yellow. If you block two of the three lights, you get a shadow of the third colour: Block the red and green lights, for example, and you get a blue shadow. If you block all three lights, you get a black shadow. And if you block one of the three lights, you get a shadow whose colour is a mixture of the two other colours.
Activity
Try producing your own coloured shadows using three coloured lights and a white screen, or wall, in a dark room.
Can you make seven shadow colours?
Find out what happens when you use different coloured paper for the screen.
Coloured Shadows, image copyright Science Made Simple
Convection caused by heat occurs in gases and liquids, which are both fluids. A hot fluid rises because heating it makes it less dense. As it rises, it begins to cool down. This means it now has less energy, so becomes denser and begins to fall once more. This is called a convection current. The whole fluid will rise in temperature as a result of mixing caused by convection currents.
Convection currents can also be caused by other types of density variations, such as saltiness (salinity) in water. Convection plays a huge role in our environment around us. The Ocean and weather systems are ruled by powerful convection currents in both the air and the sea, which dictate the tides, clouds, winds and rain. Earthquakes and volcanoes are caused by massive convection currents in the molten magma under the Earth's crust, which actually move the surface of the Earth back and forth with their immense force!
Convectional processes can also be found in the home. Both heating systems and ovens use convection to spread heat quickly and evenly around a given space. On
an even larger scale, massive convection currents circulate heat inside stars, including our own Sun, and are the causes of Sunspots and solar flares.
Activity
1. Hot air balloon
Take a very light plastic bag and carefully fill with hot air from a hair dryer. Make sure that the hair dryer doesn't touch the bag or it might melt! What do you notice happening to the bag? When the bag has enough hot air inside let it go and observe what happens.
The bag will float upwards due to the hot air inside it being less dense. As this air cools then the gravity acting on the bag will become the stronger force once more and the bag will fall back to earth.
2. Coloured Currents
Now we are going to investigate how hot and cold water moves using food colouring.
Nearly fill a small bottle with cold water. Use a pipette, or dropper, to drop a few drops of blue food colouring into the bottle. Drop the bottle into a larger container of water, such as a fish tank, and watch what happens.
Now take another small bottle and nearly fill it with warm water from the jug. This time use the red food colouring. Place the bottle in the tank. What do you notice this time?
When you connect a video camera to a screen, the screen shows what the camera sees. If the camera looks at the screen, it sees the screen displaying a smaller screen, displaying a smaller screen, displaying an even smaller screen, displaying an even smaller screen, displaying an even smaller screen, displaying an even smaller screen and so on. The pattern never ends.
A fractal can be described as a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy, or approximate, of the whole. The word fractal is derived from the Latin fractus meaning broken, or fractured.
Fractals can be found in nature wherever self-similarity occurs, such as tree branches, ferns and Romanesco broccoli.
These are called approximate fractals because the branches or fronds are miniature replicas of the whole, but they are not identical.
Other examples of approximate fractals are river systems, blood vessels and coastlines.
Activity
Play with video feedback by pointing a camera at a TV screen.
You can also try this with a webcam and computer screen.
What sort of patterns can you create?
Can you think of any other examples of fractals in nature?
Light is made up of vibrations, or waves. Normal light has these vibrations in all possible directions. Polarised light only vibrates in one direction. Light can be polarised using Polaroid, which acts as a grate, only letting light through that vibrates in a particular direction.
When two sheets of Polaroid are perpendicular to one another, no light can get through at all. This is called cross polarisation. This happens because one is only letting horizontal light through and one, vertical. If the sheets are positioned parallel to one another, then the grates run in the same direction, and half the light can get through.
Polaroid sheets are used in many applications, but one of the most common is in sunglasses.
Polarisation can also be caused by other means, such as reflection, and materials, such as Dichroic crystals.
Certain materials, such as cellophane, tape and stressed plastics, like bottles, exhibit beautiful colours when placed between two crossed polarizing filters. These materials are known as photoelastic.
Activity
Use two Polaroid lenses from sunglasses.
In a sunny area, look through both lenses and while twisting one of them. Do not look directly at the sun though.
What do you notice?
Now place a plastic lemonade bottle between the lenses, and squeeze the bottle gently.
What do you notice?
Try with other materials like cd boxes, sweet wrappers and clear sticky tape.
A smoke ring is a type of vortex called a toroidal vortex. It is, essentially, doughnut shaped, and the physics behind its aerodynamics is very complex. The basic idea behind the formation of a smoke ring is that the air rushing out of the center of the hole is moving faster than the air exiting the hole near the edge, which is slowed down. This creates a circular motion around the edges of the hole, which generates the smoke ring.
The smoke ring moves through the air because of friction.
Toroidal vortices often occur in air, but we can only see them when we add the smoke. They also occur in water and other fluids.
The sun also produces toroidal vortices. Solar flairs can send gigantic rings into space, but they aren't the largest rings. That record goes to a star that exploded creating a toroidal vortex a billion miles across!
Smoke Rings, image copyright Science Made Simple
Activity
Make your own smoke ring cannon.
Take a cardboard tube, such as a toilet roll.
Tape an old cd to one end.
Fix thin rubber sheet, such as a balloon, to the other end using elastic bands.
Flick the rubber end with your finger while aiming the cd at a target, such as a candle flame.
What happens to the flame?
How far away from the flame can you stand and still hit it with the smoke ring?
If you have access to a disco style smoke generator, fill the tube with smoke and then try again.
A vortex is a rapidly whirling spiral, a body of fluid or gas rotating around its own centre. We see vortices around us all the time: water going down the plug hole, tornadoes and hurricanes are all good examples.
When trying to explain what causes these fascinating effects to occur, it is best to look at an environment where they appear and consider what is going on.
Let's look at water swirling down a plug hole: when the stopper is removed, the force of gravity pulls the water down the plug hole. But, at the same time, the air in the pipes below is pushing upwards, trying to escape. This 'battle at the plug hole' means that neither air nor water flow easily until a vortex is formed. This is the most efficient way for the water to travel down the plug hole because it means that the spiralling water can siphon out of the plug hole while air can still travel out through the central tube.
Activity
Make your own vortex!
For this you will need two large plastic bottles, a metal washer with a 9 to 10 mm hole and some tape.
Put water into one of the bottles until it is about 3/4 full.
Put the washer on to the opening of this bottle.
Then put the empty bottle over it so that the two tops meet.
Carefully tape around the necks of the two bottles so that the washer stays in place and the joint becomes watertight.
With the filled bottle on top, rapidly rotate the bottles in a circle a few times. Stand the bottles on a table.
Observe the formation of a funnel-shaped vortex as the bottle drains.
What is the shape of the vortex?
Vortex, image copyright Science Made Simple
Waves are everywhere: waves can be sound, light, radio, microwaves, water waves, to name just a few. Waves carry energy from one location to another.
A wave can be described as a disturbance that travels through a medium, transporting energy from one location (its source) to another location without transporting matter. Each individual particle of the medium is temporarily displaced and then returns to its original position.
Although waves can be split into a number of different types, we will look at two of those types, called longitudinal and transverse waves.
Longitudinal waves: sound
Sound is a series of vibrations, or compression waves, that move through air or other materials. The vibration of some object, such as your vocal chords when you speak, creates the sound waves. The waves can be detected, or heard, when they cause a detector, such as your eardrum to vibrate. Your eardrum vibrates from the sound waves, which allows you to sense them.
A sound wave can be likened to a loose spring, such as a Slinky, being vibrated in and out along its length.
Although sound waves are invisible, their effects can be seen in an apparatus known as Ruben's Tube.
The flame tube is also called a Ruben's Tube, and is a metal tube sealed at one end and with a speaker at the other. It has a line of holes along the top, which allow the inflammable gas with which it is filled to escape. When there is no sound the heights of the flames are all equal. When the speaker creates a sound wave, which we can think of as pulses of vibrations, they travel down the tube
and reflect off the end. On the way back they will meet the new pulses and will either add to the size of the wave, or take away from them. The resulting change in pressure within the tube is shown by the different heights of the flames.
Transverse waves: light
Light is an example of a transverse wave. In a transverse wave the displacement is perpendicular to the direction the wave travels. Thus means that the particles only move up and down relative to the direction of travel of the wave energy.
A transverse wave can be likened to a loose spring, or Slinky, being vibrated up and down perpendicular to its length.
Activity
1. Make a mini sweetie wave using cocktail sticks and jelly beans fixed to sticky tape.
Fix or hold both ends tightly and flip the first sweet.
What happens to the other sweets?
What happens when the sweetie wave reaches the other end?
What type of wave is this: transverse or longitudinal?
What other types of wave can you think of?
2. With a friend, hold a long rope between you and swing it right around like a skipping rope.
This is the first harmonic of the standing wave that you have created.
Now try spinning at different speeds.
Can you create any more harmonic patterns like these?
Where else have you come across harmonics?
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